


or walk it out

by orphan_account



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, Temporary Amnesia, a vague sense of self
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 03:30:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8355328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Neymar is fine, except he doesn't recognize himself. Leo is fine, having settled nicely into pre-retirement in Argentina, except he doesn't know how to bring Neymar back to now, back to this, back to him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> for the world's most litigious granddaughter.

 

**Barcelona.**

Neymar wakes up on pitch, the shrill whistles of ninety thousand creating a white noise blanketing all his other senses, he sees spots, then stars and eventually hears the faint chorus of a Justin Bieber song _outta town girl outta town girl._ He’s lost for like a full minute in space and time before he blinks back into life. His feet hurt more than his head, like he’s been running too long, and that doesn’t make sense to him now, just like it doesn’t make sense to him that he’s on grass and everyone around him is wearing the same thing, and holy shit the people, it’s a stadium, why’s he in the middle of a—

 

Don’t worry about that. He’ll be okay. Sort of. Details of the diagnosis go over Neymar’s head, kicked wide of his attention. Or maybe no one really explains it to him at all. There are so many people fussing over him, and then not as many people fussing over him, and eventually his dad thinks to ask him what he’d like. The first time someone stops and asks what Neymar wants. They bring him food and entertainment and comfort without him asking for any of it, but this once, his dad asks. What do you want, son?

 

“I wanna. Go.” Neymar gestures vaguely at the TV screen. His dad turns his head to see what he means. Men in red and black jerseys running, a looping footage in slow-motion, Lionel Messi scoring for his team.

 

 

**Rosario.**

The news doesn’t reach Leo for a full day when it happens. He could blame the time difference because he was getting ready for his own match and then passed out shortly after, the usual, unforgiving soreness in his legs that were foreign visitors to him just a few years ago. He’s settling into pre-retirement just fine and one crucial part of it was to put more than just geographic distance between home and _home_. He doesn’t watch the matches on time, catches replays if he feels up to it.

 

When he wakes up the next morning he has to scroll through the first few messages that all start with _Neymar_ —before he slaps the phone back on the bedside table face-down. He sinks back into his goose-feather pillows and pulls the blanket over his head. Regulates his heart beat to a normal level so he doesn’t accidentally die. Maybe it’s good news maybe he just won something big maybe he dyed his hair pink and that’s why everyone in Leo’s life felt compelled to text him in the middle of the night to tell him. He thinks _please,_ and rises back out of the haven he’s made in the bed, manages to hold onto his phone with his clammy shaking hands and opens the first message.

 

_Neymar’s injured it’s bad._

 

Please.

 

_Neymar you heard? Im getting hospital number I’ll send_

 

Please.

 

Leo can’t read any of the other ones, thoughts divided neatly into two camps: (1) beside himself with worry, drenched in a litany of worst case scenarios, (2) a safe state of denial firmly reasoning that someone would’ve woken him up if it was anything like what he’s imagining. He skips all the numbers of friends and former teammates because he doesn’t want them to hear his voice come out…how it’s probably gonna come out. Neymar Sr. will be the most immediate source of information, the one who will know the most, the only one who won’t sugarcoat the news for Leo’s sake because he’ll have no room to worry about anyone’s welfare except his son’s now.

 

It goes to voicemail but Leo’s not gonna wait for the beep and try to compose anything coherent.

 

Call again.

 

Again.

 

Senior picks up the third time.  No greeting, no intro, just says in halting Spanish, he’s okay sleeping. He does not remember. He will remember. I have to go.

 

It’s better than what Leo expected. It is so much worse than what Leo could’ve imagined.

 

He calls Neymar as soon as he’s reportedly awake. The call lasts less than a minute. Neymar is perfectly polite. Unnaturally polite.

 

Well, that answers that: He doesn’t have the slightest fucking clue who Leo is.

 

He still keeps calling, every three days.

 

“Just to hear his voice, huh?”  Kun asks him when he walks back inside from his balcony, phone in hand, finger in mouth biting off an entire strip of skin by his nail. Kun is visiting this weekend all the way from the coast, was bound to notice sooner or later. Leo stares at his own hand, tiny bead of blood growing on the side of his index finger. He wishes he could quit the habit but he never regrets it until he remembers how bad it hurts, the exposed break in skin collecting all the dust and dirt from the air.

 

“He’ll remember.” Leo mumbles before going into the kitchen and running cold water over his finger. Kun doesn’t mention Neymar again the whole time, and that’s what friends are for, protecting you from your own half-formed lies.

 

 

**Barcelona.**

The family takes a vote. About Neymar going. Everyone is against it except dad. They can give Neymar everything he needs here to get better but dad knows there’s ways to heal that are outside the doctors’ capacity. And the media isn’t helping. The worst moment, after the incident itself, was when they’d left Neymar alone in the living room with the TV on and when dad came back, he saw Neymar watching himself on the screen, watch himself fall, watch the stadium erupt, watch the footage pause with Neymar’s pained face zoomed in as the reporter’s voice reported the latest updates, grainy cell phone picture of his hospital chart read into with experts weighing in with wild speculations about brain injury and psychological effects of physical trauma. It’s not that his family and friends tried especially hard to insulate Neymar from news about himself but still, they’d hoped to ease him into it all.

 

Except, turns out, there’s nothing to ease him into.

 

There’s a total lack of reaction from him, watching himself but seeing someone else.

 

Neymar looks bored and switches the channel, but not before shaking his head and half-laughing,

 

“Poor guy, he almost got killed out there.”

 

So he trusts that his dad is his dad, his sister is his sister, his friends appear to be good people. He trusts the doctor who tells him to take it easy. But he’s not super sure what his own deal is, and that’s fine. He has doctors, so he’s got something that needs fixing. He gets the odd headache, but they’re getting less and less frequent. He hears his family refer to him as….someone, but the name never quite sticks. He knows what he ate for breakfast. He knows that he looks good naked. He knows he’s filthy fucking rich, because, seriously, look at his place.

 

His friends come by less, it’s probably dad's doing or maybe the doctors. Someone who introduced himself as Rafinha showed up the day after he came home from the hospital, hope and infectious cheer radiating off him, a football in one hand and a sports jersey in the other. Neymar couldn’t decipher the name on the back of it but it had the number 11 on it. His sister quickly took the jersey and took Rafinha with her to disappear into a hallway for a minute before the both came back, Rafaella smiling unnaturally, Rafinha looking like he’s profoundly sorry for some reason. The visit was pretty short after that. Neymar blamed himself a bit, he’s a lousy host and waits for his visitors to make conversation but then fails to keep it up on his end. His mind wanders, gets bored, wants to get up, go go go.

 

He has a friend somewhere across the ocean and his name is Leo and Neymar doesn’t know anything beyond that but he comes to look forward to the calls from Leo. First few calls, Leo says his name but that just makes him freeze and reset, makes him hang up the phone too soon. Leo eventually figures that out and flat out asks him, what’s your name?

 

No one’s asked Neymar his name all this time. Not once. It surprises him when he feels his mouth open and feels his breath shape itself into:

 

“Oscar.”

 

He doesn’t know how he knows, but it’s the first time Neymar’s felt so solidly certain about anything ever since he woke up in the hospital. He doesn’t know anything, but he knows his own name now. And he has Leo to thank for that, for giving him that. If for no other reason than that, he feels this rush of gratitude and something, something towards this Leo. He keeps wanting to call him first, but ever since his dad showed him Leo on TV, he doesn’t think he should get to call Leo.  Leo is a little dude who takes up all the space on the pitch, on the screen, who takes up all the air from a room when he gets anywhere close to the goal. He makes Neymar pay attention and feel a phantom itch on his calves watching the men run on the pitch.

 

It’s a month since Neymar wakes up as Oscar that he decides he wants to not be here. His dad suggests Brazil but that makes panic rush up under his ears and then morph into a headache. He’s not meant to be in Brazil, that’s not it, that’s not where.

 

He loves Leo for asking him his name, he loves his dad for asking him what he wants. It doesn’t register as significant that Neymar points to the screen, at the player, instead of naming a place to go. Feels a rush of relief that it’s finally out of him now, that he not only put a name to what he wants but that he developed it into a realistic plan: pack up, call ahead, arrange travel and go.

 

 

 **Rosario**.

Leo could've gone back there, to Barcelona, when he found out. People probably expected him to, but something kept him back. The manager would've given him time off no questions asked, not that anyone asks him any questions he doesn’t want nowadays, but. He has no way of knowing yet that Neymar is the one who’ll come to him, by some inexplicable trick of chance or destiny, who knows.

 

It’s been something like thirty-five days.  No, exactly thirty-five days. Leo remembers when he woke up and learned.  Leo remembers when he first talked to “Oscar” on the phone, rolling with it like he’s doing the right thing, going along with it instead of insisting, Neymar Neymar Neymar wake up.  Wake up to yourself. It’s all easier on the phone or skype. With the press of a button he can stop the conversation, give himself space to deal with Neymar being there and being nowhere at once.

 

It’s later than usual when Leo calls him this time. A big win turned into a team dinner turned into a team party turned into a team afterparty. He’s not young enough for half of these occasions but he wanted to go back a little, to lose himself a little, get lost to wherever Neymar’s gone off to for a while.

 

“Oscar.” Leo starts, because he’s heard Neymar hold his breath until he said this name before, heard him exhale in relief each time. It’s an easy enough concession to make to comfort Neymar, a small if annoying gesture to make him relax.

 

“Watched your match.” Neymar grins through his words, Leo can tell. Quick math told him this was an okay time to call, but the same math tells him Neymar stayed up way too late to watch it. He feels bad about that. No, he feels thrilled about that. Leo has this delusional hope that Neymar seeing him playing football will shake something in him, will make him suddenly. Be back. Height of narcissism yeah, but he knows Neymar.

 

“Should’ve slept instead.”

 

“Hey I have a question. Don’t say no right away, okay?” Neymar’s voice trails out towards the end, makes Leo swallow three times in quick succession trying to gather himself together. Leo might’ve had some drinks a bit, earlier, a little more than a bit. He’s in no state to say no to anything Neymar says and that’s all kinds of terrifying.

 

“What is it?” Leo can’t stop his hand traveling to his teeth, his teeth closing around the corner of a nail, biting down.

 

“I’m thinking about, I was thinking,” Neymar sounds like he’s not done thinking. Leo doesn’t rush him.

 

“I can get my own place obviously, if you don’t have.”

 

“Ne—Oscar. I’m sorry, I’m, I don’t follow.” Leo almost slips, will punish himself for that later, but for now, he just needs Neymar to spit it out, whatever he wants, anything, anything he wants.

 

“It’s getting kinda, like, a lot here. They’re, my family, they’re. Great, they’re amazing, but I just. I was thinking. Can I come there?”

 

Ah, there it is.

 

Leo can’t help repeating that back to him, just to make sure he’s not midway into sleep and hearing things.

 

“Come here, you want to.”

 

“Yeah, if that’s okay. Look, I’m okay, it’s. I’m not like, high maintenance or anything, I’ll keep my check ups and stuff of course,” Neymar rambles, tries too hard to sell Leo the idea.

 

“Uhh,” Leo buys himself time to figure out how to tell him yes without saying please, please. Lands on:

 

“I’ll pick you up from the airport, tell me when.”

 

Leo sticks the phone between his ear and shoulder so he can wipe both palms on his shorts, he’s sweating like the room’s become a sauna in two seconds. Neymar’s delighted, nervous laugh fills his ear, settles him back into sobriety just like that.

 

“Is tomorrow too soon?” Neymar asks, doesn’t sound like he’s joking. Yeah, it’s really too soon but Leo trusts Neymar’s family to stop him from doing anything he’s not supposed to, so he delegates the responsibility of being responsible about this to them, for now, until Neymar’s here at least. Can’t think of a reason why not.

 

“What time tomorrow?” Leo cards his fingers through his short beard, it’s already tomorrow technically, but he can sleep here while Neymar sleeps on the flight over and it’ll be fine it’s fine.

 

“Eh, I don’t know, I didn’t know you’d say yes. But I’ll call you back when I know?” Neymar sounds like he’s walking around in his house, probably off to wake up his dad so they can get planning.

 

Leo almost says _don’t be stupid of course I’d say yes._ Swallows that, along with all variations of _why? Why here? Why me?_ he wants to ask but won’t.

 

 

**Barcelona.**

Dad gives him a second phone to keep on him at all times. In case he can’t reach Neymar with the first phone. Family’s going back to Brazil in a bit, but that won’t make too much of a difference, maybe shave a few hours of travel between them.  An overqualified nurse follows him, but promises to keep his distance, just be there, in the neighborhood, just in case.  For a few hours Neymar overhears pieces of heated conversation between dad and “club.” Neymar zones out or maybe he can’t help zoning out. There are some things that if he gets too close to them, he hears the click of a circuit breaker in an electrical panel, and he has to swim back up to surface in his mind. “Club” is one of those somethings. Piles of colorful football boots they eventually boxed up and moved to storage are also those things. He can figure it out if he dwells on it but he won’t. He doesn’t have any problems watching Leo’s team play. A selective sort of trigger he’s not gonna push to its limit, at least not yet.

 

His bags are packed for him (thanks) and dad arranged everything already, travel-wise (thanks) so he finds himself idle waiting for the car. Has time to spend in the bathroom, spot lights over the mirror helping him out in the worst way. He can see every blemish and asymmetrically-growing eyebrow hair with frightening clarity. Pulls out a pair of glasses from its box, places them over his nose. He doesn’t need them really, but something about them feels right. He drops a dollop of hair gel in the middle of his palm, spreads it out between his fingers before attacking his hair, a tame Mohawk grown soft from his inattention. Switches out his earrings to small silver hoops. Dabs cologne under his ears before realizing it’ll probably wear off completely by the time he’s arrived.

 

“Why are you trying so hard?” He asks his own reflection. It doesn’t sound right.

 

“Why am I trying so hard?” He tries again. Better.

 

 _What am I doing?_ He doesn’t ask.

 

He’ll be overly alert in the car, from the coffee he had three sips of, not from nerves or anything.

 

He’ll start dozing off when he tries to make himself read a book on the plane.

 

He’ll wake up suddenly and feel extremely alone, he’ll almost wake up the nurse with some pretext of a headache but that’ll just make the plane turn right the fuck back around, so he’ll suck it up and uneasily slip back into sleep.

 

 

**Rosario.**

Leo doesn’t sleep. He can’t sleep. He mechanically makes toast, scrapes the knife against the bottom of the jar of dulce de leche but there isn’t much of it left in there and he doesn’t feel up to opening up a new jar. He takes one bite of the toast, spits it back out when it gives him vertigo.

 

Oscar’s coming. With Neymar somewhere in there. Somewhere Leo can’t touch.

 

One hour later, two hours later, the knock on his door startles him out of his skin.

 

They don’t hug at first because, is this technically the first time they’re meeting, in person? Neymar has no such qualms, shimmies out of his bright yellow backpack to envelop Leo, using the advantage of the two centimeter difference in their heights.

 

“Thank you.” Neymar says, face against the side of Leo’s neck.

 

“Thank _you_.” Leo blurts out, doesn’t realize he’s done it. Makes Neymar disengage from the hug to look at him, laughing.

 

“For what?”

 

Leo can’t think of a lie fast enough, picks up the backpack from the ground and walks inside instead.

 

There’s a cup of orange juice and water waiting for Neymar on the coffee table across from the couch but now that Leo’s thinking about it, it looks weird that Leo prepared stuff for him in advance, just like, sitting around and waiting for him. Neymar doesn’t want to be babied, that’s the entire reason he left home to go stay with some dude across the world he knows from just his voice and his family’s assurances that they are, in fact, good friends.

 

It’s an uneventful day. Leo suggests Neymar go upstairs and sleep some, admits that he needs to sleep too. Eight hours later there’s sandwiches to eat and dumb TV to watch in eerie but not disturbing silence. Neymar doses off again at some point, which is normal, it was in the list of things Neymar’s dad sent him by email earlier. For a while Leo is afraid to move on the couch because Neymar used to be a heavy sleeper but who knows about Oscar? But eventually he does need to move. Gently removes Neymar’s glasses in between an inhale and an exhale. Leo’s sadness about the whole situation threatens to overflow from where he’s kept it so far, so he focuses on folding up the glasses carefully and feeling its light weight in his hands. So that’s day one.

 

Days one through twenty, it’s a pretty chill routine. Neymar gets bored on like day two and a half, decides he’s gonna come to Leo’s trainings. This is a terrible idea because Leo can’t control everyone’s reactions to him and he’ll never forgive himself if media coverage of Newell’s multiples by a thousand overnight because of their new guest and everyone swarms Neymar, calls Neymar by his name, causes a shitstorm Leo can’t extricate him from. Leo almost resents Neymar for making him have to think about these things. The responsibility he craved so bad from distance, the responsibility he was never ready for actually. Leo eventually relents, prepares a whole speech for the team and staff, with super strict rules of behavior, and he’s glad for once for the esteem his team affords him, that they listen, that they don’t dare betray their own curiosity. No one call him by his name. No one approach him unless I’m with him. Always let him start conversations, if he wants. Don’t kick a ball at him without warning. I know you wouldn’t but please don’t take his picture. He’s fine but please, just. Thank you.

 

Days three though thirty, Leo wakes up first. Starts with _good morning_ … Holds his pause for a beat, withholds his name, real and assumed, hoping one of these days Neymar will wake up remembering. He hasn’t so far, but he could.

 

Day thirty, Neymar confronts Leo in the middle of putting the groceries away. Leo doesn’t do his own grocery shopping, hasn’t for a long, long time, but it’s Neymar’s favorite thing to do, so someone’s out of a paid job now.

 

“Why do you keep calling for, for Neymar when you sleep?”

 

Leo feels a shake creep into his hands hearing Neymar saying his name with no sense of ownership of it. Leo looks at him sadly before catching himself, swiftly turns away.

 

“I don’t sleeptalk.” Leo closes one cupboard, opens another one further away from Neymar, the door hopefully takes him out of Neymar’s line of vision.

 

“Man, you totally do, I even recorded it.” Neymar drops the bag of bread onto the counter to fish out his phone from his back pocket.

 

“Why are you creeping around my room, yours is on the other side.” Leo points out, doesn’t mention the guest room has its own bathroom, literally absolutely no reason for Neymar to be walking across the hallway in the middle of the night.

 

Neymar looks embarrassed at that, puts his phone away, picks up the bag of bread again. The bag has Leo’s picture on it, it’s such a bad picture that Neymar completely loses his shit laughing at it. Leo closes his eyes and goes where the familiar laughter takes him. Having Neymar this close day in day out makes him forget how far he actually is, how far they are from where they were, before Leo left. There’ve been close calls already so far. Made Leo wish someone else kept tabs on him the way he does for Neymar, so they could bring him back to his senses when he almost loses it, when he almost forgets the lines painted so carefully between them, not to be crossed under penalty of—

 

Close call one: Neymar asks for Leo’s help dying his hair. Leo thinks it’s a bad idea but can’t really deny him something so dumb, so insignificant. There’s the deep purple of toner following the bleach, will ruin any fabric, so Leo takes off his shirt before putting on the cheap thin plastic gloves. Doesn’t miss Neymar’s smile take on a whole different character, just powers through. Doesn’t miss Neymar getting sleepy, moving to rest his forehead against Leo’s chest while he sits on the toilet cover. Leo’s hands in gloves, purple goo dripping between his fingers into Neymar’s hair, he can’t use them to push Neymar back, tell him not to keep pressing his nose into the small dip to the right of his heart. Holding his breath because of the terrible bleach smell helps because this way he can’t use up the oxygen he doesn’t have to say Neymar’s name, his real name.

 

Close call two: Neymar comes with, to an away match. The team’s used to him now, and if they’re weird about it behind Leo’s back, well he doesn’t know. Neymar insists on being useful, and it embarrasses and pleases Leo in equal measure when he realizes Neymar has been studying, learning, from the staff, stuff like Leo’s particular diet on training days and his post-match recovery routine and his special old man stretches as he calls them. The one thing he won’t do is brew and carry mate for Leo, even when Leo super nicely asks him for it. Leo panics about it at first, worries, sends off a quick text to Neymar’s doctor and his father to see if it’s a symptom or something, like his aversion to his name, but all he gets back is “not as far as we’re aware” and “???” respectively. When they come back home though, after the team loses and Leo suffers a knock that’ll keep him out a couple weeks, Leo’s nose picks up a familiar scent that draws him into the kitchen first thing, forgetting that he couldn’t step fully on his right foot until now, and there, Neymar pouring water into the gourd, the bombilla stuck between his teeth while steam rises slowly.

 

“You can’t make me drink it, but here.” Neymar says around the metal straw in his mouth.

 

It’s probably the pain killers they gave him but Leo imagines himself, too easily, walking towards Neymar, pulling the straw from his mouth, chasing the taste of metal from the fronts of his teeth all the way into the underside of his tongue. Chasing his own memory across Neymar's skin, pressing the one tattoo only he knows about, making him last one full minute longer than he usually does. Till Neymar remembers, till he comes back.

 

Leo can’t even trust his voice to say thank you, knows he might blurt out _leave now you’ve stayed too long you’ve done too much_.

 

Day forty to the three month mark, Neymar settles into a kind of a personal valet role, insists on it, and it’s the worst, but Leo doesn’t know how to make him stop, when the tasks and routines seem to help Neymar, seem to make his laughs last longer and his conversations with his family less strained. A sense of purpose maybe.

 

In public it gets easier for Leo to ask for things, to crystallize a practical reason for Neymar to always be around. Hey Oscar, towel please. Can you schedule a massage please. The lawyer wants to meet can you go for me just bring me the signature pages. Can you make sure they have extras for the long sleeved jerseys? Oscar, charge my phone? It’s like on twenty percent, thanks. Neymar bristles at eggshells his family walked on, doesn’t want Leo fussing either, but Leo may be going above and beyond with his weirdly professional distance from Neymar when they’re outside, with the team. He’s more selfish in his motives for that than he pretends in the light of day. If he’s always asking for things, that gives Neymar less time to ask anything of Leo, ask for things Leo can’t give him, not now.

 

Close call three: Leo wakes up in the middle of the night, his eyes picking up a subtle shift in the light from behind his eyelids. Realizes blearily that Neymar’s lurking outside his door, the light from the end of the hallway sneaking in from where the door is now ajar.

 

“I’m not sleeptalking.” Leo tells him, closes his eyes again, figuring Neymar will shuffle away when he realizes he’s caught.

 

Instead, Neymar walks fully into the room, closes the door behind him so that there’s no more light inside.

 

“I know. Can I ask you something?”

 

“No. Go back to sleep.” Leo turns onto his stomach, pointedly pulls a pillow on top of his head like go away.

 

The bed dips. Neymar is clearly having trouble reading signs, isn’t going away.

 

“Look, I don’t remember it, I’m sorry I don’t, but I know, I’m sorry I don’t know how, but I know that we.”

 

Leo doesn’t prompt him with a _we what?_ Hopes Neymar loses his courage and goes away, please, he’s not awake enough for this, not nearly.

 

“Will you stop me if I try to, uh.” Neymar starts, lifts the covers on one side of the bed like he’s about to climb in.

 

Yes.

 

No.

 

Maybe.

 

Leo won’t know which until Neymar does it.

 

Neymar does it, gets in under the covers. Neymar pulls the pillow from over Leo’s head. Neymar stares at him but Leo can’t tell for sure while his eyes are still shut closed with every ounce of his will. Neymar combs Leo’s hair back from his forehead and closes the distance between them and Leo has less time than a single grain of sand in an hourglass to save them both from what’s gonna happen. He uses it to turn his face fully into the pillow under his head, and. Neymar’s kiss lands somewhere in his hair, lingers there a moment. Leo waits for Neymar’s regret to fill the room until he feels unwelcome there and finally leaves. It doesn’t happen. Neymar stays where he is, manages to fall asleep while Leo plays dead, feeling more alive than he has in months.

 

Back to:

Get me bandages. A banana or something, not the chocolate protein things. Reschedule the interview. Tell them I’m not eating another fucking fish all month. Hey Oscar, did you get the invoice from the boat guys?

 

Leo asks and asks and asks.

 

Neymar doesn’t ask again. Neymar settles for Leo’s tone changing when they get inside, Leo kneeling on the hardwood floor with his bare knees to untie Neymar’s shoes by the door, Leo making him burnt toast that gets less and less burnt with each attempt every passing day, Leo nodding along to Neymar’s music that he still probably hates, Leo dropping off a new box of hair dye in Neymar’s bathroom when he notices his roots are getting crazy.

 

Neymar goes to Brazil for two weeks and Leo drives himself up a wall from the oppressive silence at the house. Leaves his phone in the car so he’s not tempted to answer texts Neymar hasn’t even sent. He already embarrassed himself asking _when are you coming back_ the day after he left. They both laughed about it, which made it less embarrassing but Leo couldn’t look at himself in the mirror for two days after that. On the upside, he can now jerk off whenever, wherever now, laundry room at two in the afternoon? Go for it.  On the downside, everything else. He keeps thinking Neymar will come back early, even though his return ticket said two weeks, but no, he stays the full two weeks. This would be a great time for some self-reflection and contemplation about long-term plans and maybe even having a proper sit-down with Neymar’s medical team to give them information, observations, anything that could be helpful. Leo doesn’t do any of these things.

 

Something is off when Neymar comes back. In a good way. He’s meaner when he makes fun of Leo, makes food just for himself and doesn’t share. Leaves his shoes everywhere including on kitchen counters and in Leo’s bathroom even though he knows that annoys the shit out of Leo. He’s not the cleanest, neatest person in the world but this one thing sets him off. He finds he’s mad at Neymar more often, which has the perverse effect of pushing him deeper into a sense of normalcy. When Neymar kicks the glass of water on the coffee table onto Leo’s computer on purpose and smirks at him like fuck you, Leo is _this close_ to screaming _Neymar Neymar Neymar answer me_. He doesn’t do it of course, but he does feel something like adrenaline bubbling up in his chest, because he _could’ve_.

 

On his first day back from Brazil, Neymar remembers. Easy as waking up, really waking up. Not all of it, but he remembers enough to rush to his phone, google something to confirm he’s not dreaming it, and then pull up the video he’d recorded of Leo sleeptalking to “Neymar.” He can hear Leo puttering around in the kitchen now, can too-easily imagine his face all morning-grumpy as he clumsily spills water here, drops an egg there.

 

Easy as re-inhabiting your body after a long warm shower that prunes all your skin.

 

He feels phantom grass under his toes when he climbs out of bed and onto the carpet. He feels the full significance of his tattoos as if the ink is going into his skin for the first time, a hypnotizing, dulling pain.  He feels the loss of so many he loved, so many who loved him back, because he hadn’t remembered them enough to bear being around them, all except Leo.

 

He feels.

 

With Leo, he feels no differently than how he felt before he remembered, when instinct told him this is where he needed to be, this is where he would find it, whatever it was. Thinking back, it’s scary now, that deep in his core, he’d kept Leo but not what _made_ Leo, what made them. He hadn’t kept football. Too easily, he can imagine walking into the kitchen. Saying I’m here I’m here Leo I’m.

 

But the fall out, the fall out.

 

Leo would be glad, he’d be so fucking happy. Leo probably thinks he doesn’t show it but Neymar (Neymar. _Neymar_.) saw everyday that he had it as bad as Neymar, that he was as in this as much as Neymar was, as Neymar _is._

 

Neymar doesn’t think it through, he’s too new, too raw, too desperate to keep what he’s got, when he decides he’ll be Oscar a bit longer. Keep all that Leo gives him now, all that Leo desperately does to bring him back. Does that make him a terrible person? He doesn’t look at his own reflection when he brushes his teeth.

 

Of course it’s not sustainable. Neymar can’t hide all that’s coming up onto the surface now. Antagonizes Leo like he used to, like they used to, pushes buttons he knew would bring out the worst (the best) in Leo, tries to coax out the flash of anger in Leo that always used to segue into something warm then something crackling hot. If Leo notices, he doesn’t show it. Picks up Neymar’s shoes from where he haphazardly left them and throws them into the trash. Rolls his eyes when Neymar destroys his computer, starts using Neymar’s instead, deleting Neymar’s whole carefully-curated porn collection in revenge.

 

Neymar calms down a bit, moves onto the melancholy phase when his internal countdown clock keeps ticking away while Leo combs his hair with his fingers. Head on Leo’s lap, watching old cartoons sideways, suppressing his yawns so Leo doesn’t send him to bed. Driving around for no reason with Leo, popping two gummy bears into his mouth for each one that he feeds Leo whose hands are properly holding onto the steering wheel which he didn’t used to do, before. The part of town Leo lives in, they can see stars, but Leo doesn’t give a shit. Still sits with Neymar in the backyard, staring up and pretending he sees all the balls and dicks Neymar swears he spots in the constellations. This is gonna end this is gonna end. Leo will be happy for him, but then he’ll watch Neymar pack his bags and go back to the grass, the boots, the ball.

 

They have this for one week, and then it’s time.

 

It’s the second to last match of the season, against Racing, it won’t decide anything or anything, but you wouldn’t know that from watching the desperate intensity both teams play with, Neymar’s lost count of yellow cards, knows the reds would’ve accumulated by now in Europe.

 

A loud whistle, a stadium holding its breath a beat before erupting into one cohesive noise so familiar it takes Neymar taken out of his reality for a split second before he comes right back to it. He sees spots, he sees stars, before blinking them all away and running from the sidelines onto the pitch, hands behind him are too late to stop him. Neymar didn’t even see the tackle, just the aftermath of Leo tumbling over and stopping still. Neymar’s attention switches without his consent from Leo to the player who’s nursing his own knee after his viciously-timed tackle, he peels off in the other player’s direction, murder, murder in his eyes.

 

It’s pain that brings Leo back to consciousness, the burn in his knee. Halfway on his way to sitting up he sees Neymar running off towards the defender who—

 

“Neymar, stop!” Leo screams, doesn’t expect to be heard among all the noise, but,

 

Neymar turns to him, it’s almost accidental that their eyes lock, and

 

There he is.

 

A wild look about him, a wild truth in his eyes, and he. He turned to his name.

 

Neymar’s legs halt on their own volition, finding Leo has more authority over them than Neymar does. Same goes for the rest of his body, the breath in his lungs and the beats left in his heart, all at Leo’s beck and call. There Leo is, more than an aggregate mass of memories, something permanently and annoyingly left engraved somewhere underneath Neymar’s own name, his own sense of being.

 

Neymar watches Leo get it, really get it, and he struggles to get up still looking at Neymar but hey, life goes on, and it does, around them, people rush to Leo’s side, medical bags he tries to push away, puffy neon jackets fussing over him. A linesman finally manages to pull Neymar back to the side, saying words not slowly enough for Neymar to understand.

 

There was a _before_ for them, there was a _during_ for them, and there’ll be an _after._ If Leo lets himself remember, too.

 

 

[end]


End file.
